Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2019 shortlist revealed
- Published
From the Northern Lights, stars and planets, our galaxy is full of amazing natural wonders. Luckily, lots of very talented photographers have taken some amazing pictures and they've been shortlisted as part of the Royal Observatory’s Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2019 competition. We've selected some of our favourites, including this picture of a 60 metre waterfall and Northern Lights in Iceland.
An overall winner will be chosen from 38 images, with the winner taking home £10,000. This one shows off the planet Saturn with its iconic rings. In the bottom right corner you can see the massive moon Titan.
This picture is called the Deep in the Heart of Mordor, and it does look a lot like the Eye of Sauron from the film, Lord of the Rings. However, the image is actually something called The Helix Nebula. What can be seen are the outer layers of a star near the end of its life. Gas and dust glow because of radiation coming from the star at the end of its evolution.
The dark spot that you can see on the Moon is called the Sea of Crises and isn't a huge crater caused by asteroids. It's actually dark because of volcanic activity on the moon's surface formed by ancient volcanic eruptions.
This is a photo of a nebula called the 'Gum nebula' which look to us like it would taste of raspberries. A nebula is actually lots of gas, which is often created by exploding stars. In this picture, the red gas is hydrogen and blue gas is ionized oxygen.
This photo was taken in China during a meteor shower. As the rock entered the Earth's atmosphere it created a fireball that flashed over the sky and lit up the ground.
This incredible photo shows the amazing pattern of the Northern Lights shaped like a bird. The Northern Lights, otherwise known as the Aurora Borealis, is a natural light display in the sky, often seen the closer you are to the North or South Pole.
- Published19 June 2019
- Published26 July 2017